Then We Take Berlin

by Lawton, John

  A little ringing round among those few friends that had found space in heart or mind to forgive and Arthur soon had the company of fellow physicist Marte Mayerling. Personally, in the time Arthur had worked with Marte before the war, when physics had been their mutual passion, he had found her passionless about anything else and pretty well humourless. That said, the one soft spot in that heart of pure maths seemed to be for Szabo. She had dismissed his treason with, “Frontiers, nations . . . are for smaller minds than ours . . . we are citizens of the world.” A world they had damn near blown up. At the end of the war Arthur had not wanted to work in physics any longer. He was happy as a publisher—who ever heard of a physicist with luncheon expenses—how many mathematical geniuses took breakfast at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand and charged it to the firm?

  Marte had flown far nearer the sun than he and had worked at Berkeley on the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. She had stayed with physics, resumed her place at Imperial College, London, and declined ever after to work on weapons of any kind.

  A train ride with Marte, and she had travelled down to Essex with him many times, always left Arthur feeling that he had been brought up to date in his former interest. She saved him having to read the New Scientist. Anything of import in it was at the tip of her tongue waiting to be imparted. Occasionally he wished she had learnt the knack of talking about the weather, but you can’t have everything, and more often than not he relished her intensity and the glut of knowledge that threatened to overwhelm him, and, had East Blathering been closer to Colchester than Chelmsford, would most certainly have done so. An English summer’s afternoon, a hip flask, a half-bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet ’48, a little French bread and foie gras in his briefcase, the company of one of the smartest women on the planet . . . what was not to like?

  “I do wish you’d learn to drive, Arthur.”

  “Stop being a sourpuss, Marte. You’re so much more beautiful when you smile.”

  Indeed she was. He doubted she was much over forty, and still a bit of a looker. But she was immune to flattery.

  “It’s so tiresome. All the changes. Tube, train, cab, and back again.”

  She had learnt “tiresome” early on in their time as adopted English. It alternated with “ghastly” as one of her habitual upper-class moan words.

  “Look at it from Karel’s point of view. What do you think he prefers, Blathering or Pentonville?”

  “At least I can get to Pentonville just by flagging a cab.”

  “But such a ghastly place.”

  She knew he was taking the mickey, and changed the subject.

  “Does he have plans?”

  “Dunno. That’s rather why we’re here.”

  “Does he have . . . options?”

  “You tell me. Would any British university have him back?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then he must find something else to do.”

  “Surely he must leave England?”

  “He may not have to. He’s still a citizen after all. Technically Karel is a traitor not a spy. They never took citizenship away from him.”

  “Good God, why on earth not? There are times I think we have landed down among lunatics. After what he did?”

  “Perhaps they just forgot.”

  “He gave the atom bomb to the USSR. That, surely, is unforgettable?”

  “I’m sure it is. But it won’t be a matter of what the English forget but what they’ll forgive.”

  Marte pondered this. Looked out at the passing countryside without seeing any of it.

  Then she said, “He should leave. In fact, he must leave.”

  Her certainties, once uttered, were as fixed as Aristotle’s Laws. He knew she’d say it to Szabo as readily as she had just said it to him, and she did.

  Szabo looked sad. In all the years Arthur had visited him, he had never wanted to discuss the old country—any of them, not Hungary, not Germany, not Austria—and seemed to have most affection for the country he had betrayed. In part, Arthur thought, because he could not see the betrayal for what it was.

  “Leave England? Where would I go?”

  “There will be people, the muckraking journalists, the die-hard Tories who will expect you to go to Russia,” Arthur said.

  “But I’ve never been to Russia. I don’t speak a word of Russian beyond ‘das vidanye’ and ‘spasibo’ and I only learnt those to be polite to Russians in the camps.”

  “What would you like to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you like to work for me?”

  “I don’t know. I mean . . . that’s very kind of you . . . but do you even know if you’d be allowed to employ me?”

  “If you stay, the authorities cannot stop me. It is, as they tell you at every turn, a free country.”

  “If I stay?”

  “Karel, they’re not going to throw you out. I have this on some . . . authority. There that word again.”

  “What authority?”

  “I talked to Rod Troy. He’s shadow Home Secretary now. I’ve known him for years. We were interned together. He had a private word with the Home Secretary. They’re not going to throw you out.”

  Marte had not spoken for several minutes. Arthur had been conscious of the grinding of the millwheels of her mind—or to do her more justice, the scattering of her alpha particles.

  “Arthur. Would you be so kind as to give me a moment alone with Karel?”

  Kornfeld looked at the impassive prison warder. Back against the wall by the door, hands clasped behind him, eyes focussed on nothing, deaf to the room, and realised that they could as well be alone and that whatever she wished to say in private might just remain that way. After all, all they had to do was switch to German.

  “Of course. I’ll be just outside.”

  §160

  Karel Szabo was released on August 27.

  On September 3—the anniversary of the war that had made refugees of both of them—he and Marte Mayerling caught the Dover to Calais ferry, and from Calais a train for Paris, Gare du Nord.

  On arrival in Paris they vanished.

  Four months later, in January 1956, they were reported seen in Dresden, now part of the German Democratic Republic—commonly referred to as East Germany.

  §161

  London Summer 1955: Campden Hill Square W8

  The home of Lt Colonel and Lady Margaret Burne-Jones

  Wilderness had been to Burne-Jones’s home many times. He was almost certain it was against all military protocol to mix socially with other ranks, but if protocol had mattered much to Burne-Jones he would have fired Wilderness in 1948, and for that matter in 1950, 1951, and 1954.

  It had been 1949 the first time. They were both back in England. Wilderness had recovered from the bullet Yuri put in him at a BAOR hospital in München Gladbach. He had been there, he thought, long after his health required it and had concluded it was Burne-Jones’s way of locking him up without the need of a key. It was January ’49 before they granted him a clean bill of health and a travel warrant back to London. He landed back in Blighty in civvies, silently adamant that he’d “never wear a fuckin’ uniform again.”

  Wilderness got off the bus in the Commercial Road and walked the length of Sidney Street. Much of it lay in ruins, much as it had when he had left in 1946. The bombed-out, roofless houses and the gutted factories. A gang of rowdy boys came haring out of a ruin and stopped just short of colliding with him, frozen with guilt about nothing worse than being boys. Another boy stared silently down at him from the first floor window, his face framed in jagged glass. Wilderness caught a glimpse of the boy he used to be—but this was a dog-eat-dog world, every boy for himself. He bid them “good morning” and walked on. Twenty paces on, the jeering and catcalling resumed to the sound of breaking glass.

  Near the south end of the street a funfair was being dismantled—there was something visually startling about multicoloured wooden horses and scarlet and orange bunting in the grey, washed-out, s
corched landscape. Nothing else had colour. Everything was ash.

  He passed familiar landmarks that had survived the Blitz—the lemonade factory, with its towers of bottles, the brewery and the haze of hops and horseshit that seemed to emanate from it, the newsagents that sold rationed fags, rationed sweets, and under-the-counter pornography . . . the monumental masons, creating the only record most East Enders ever got, a tombstone.

  He stopped at the railings and peered through, as fascinated by dates and death as he had been at the age of fourteen. Novellas written in solid stone . . . wife of . . . and also . . . of the above . . . aged six weeks . . . aged eighty-seven years.

  It was their sole marketing ploy to stick a row of stones in a dozen different styles where they could be read from the street. He’d often wondered if they made up the names or if they simply made advertisements out of the stones no one had ever come to collect. Now he knew—the second from the right read far too tersely:

  Abner Riley

  1884–1944

  What was Merle playing at? Why had she left him here? Why hadn’t this been put up at the head of his grave in St. George’s churchyard months—no years—ago?

  He arrived on Merle’s doorstep to find his key did not fit the lock. A woman he vaguely recognised opened the door to him.

  “Young Joe is it? My, you’ve filled out.”

  Wilderness stared.

  “You don’t know me do you? Molly. Molly Riley. Married to your grandad’s second cousin Paddy? Anyway, don’t stand there freezing to death. Come on in.”

  It was cleaner by far than it had ever been under Merle’s care. Some of the furniture was the same—the old, clumpy Victorian stuff that had belonged to Abner, and before that to Abner’s father. Some of it was new—the lightweight, make-do-and-plywood look that was known as “Utility”—the Morrison shelter had gone, and in its place stood a folding Utility table as substantial as an orange-box. The most familiar object in the room was Abner’s armchair next to the range. It had lost much of its stuffing even in 1941—and judging from the array of safety pins holding the rest in, it was something Molly meant to survive. He could almost see Abner sitting there, easing off his boots, complaining about his corns, saying, “Make us a cuppa, Merle.”

  Merle. Where the fuck was Merle?

  “Where’s Merle?”

  “Oh my God, don’t tell me you didn’t get her letter? She’s married again. Paddy and I took over the lease from her at the end of the summer.”

  Not for one moment did Wilderness believe Merle had written to him. No more than she’d bothered to collect Abner’s stone.

  “Do you have a forwarding address?”

  “Well,” said Molly. “I did. But the last couple of weeks things have started coming back to me as ‘not known at this address.’ All the same you can have it if you want.”

  She picked up an envelope from the table and with a stub of a pencil scribbled down an address in Devonshire Place.

  “Near Regent’s Park?” Wilderness asked.

  “Oh yes. Posh. She married a bit o’ posh. Alistair or Angus or something. And one of them double-barrelled names.”

  “And my . . . things?”

  “Your things?”

  “Books mostly. I left a lot of books. In my room, that is the attic room.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m with you now. Well. We got four kids—you got four little cousins now, three girls and a boy—all at school right now or else they’d be here asking you a million questions—so we, like we needed the space. It’s young Doris’s room.”

  “That’s fine, Molly. I don’t want the room. It’s your house now. I just wanted the books, well some of them.”

  “Like I was saying. Merle took all your stuff and left it with that pal o’ hers over in White Horse Lane.”

  Wilderness could not think who.

  “You know. That blonde woman there used to be all the gossip about. Bit of a looker. Married to that grumpy old Jew who runs the tailor’s opposite the Underground.”

  “Judy Jacks?”

  “That’s ’er. Anyway, she’s got all your stuff safe and sound.”

  As he stood on the doorstep, under a January sky, breath freezing in the winter air, knowing he was standing on this threshold for the last time in his life, deciding to avoid ascribing any meaning to it, Molly said, “We could put you up on the sofa, just for a couple of nights, if you like.”

  And meaning took him regardless. “I’ll be fine Molly. What’s gone is gone. What’s done is done.”

  He walked over to White Horse Lane, following much the same route he had walked with Abner eight years ago when the old man had collected him after the air raid that had killed his mother—across the top of Jubilee Street, down Redman’s Road—thinking Stepney looked worse than Berlin—did no one clear up after a war?—and hoping Billy Jacks was not at home.

  He wasn’t. Judy Jacks answered the door. A flimsy, flowery summer dress as though they were not in the depths of winter. A Maginot Line of goose pimples running up her arms. He’d had the hots for Judy when he was a priapic sixteen. He didn’t know a Stepney lad that hadn’t. Blue eyes, blonde hair, hourglass curves . . . never seemed to age. Rumour had it that Billy had caught her and a young copper in flagrante across the kitchen table, but he’d never believe that. Billy Jacks would have killed both of them if that really had happened.

  She was looking at him now, waiting for him to snap out of it.

  “Joe? You gonna speak or what?”

  She was gorgeous, he thought, coming up to fifty and still fit to turn a teenager’s head.

  “Mrs. Jacks.”

  “I think you’re old enough to call me Judy. I suppose you’ve come for your stuff?”

  She walked back into the house, a silent invitation to follow hanging in the air between them.

  In the living room, a meagre coal fire. You could count the lumps in the grate. On the mantelpiece an array of photographs, some framed, some merely postcard-sized, wedged into the frame of something bigger by one corner. In one of the frames, a man in the uniform of the Great War, a Tommy Atkins, he recognised as a younger version of one of the old men of his childhood. Mr. Jacks Sr. The man in the postcard, in the uniform of the Second World War, a REME corporal, he knew well—Danny Jacks, son and heir of the irascible Billy Jacks, tailor of Stepney Green. He was six or seven years older than Wilderness himself. One of the wide boys of the Green. He doubted Danny wanted to be heir to a tailor’s shop. Then it dawned on him. He’d no idea if Danny had survived the war or not. The last year he was in England—the year of the great demob—had been such a roller coaster he’d never thought to ask about what people didn’t volunteer to tell.

  “He’s a schoolteacher in Leytonstone now.”

  Judy was standing in the kitchen doorway, a kettle hissing in the room behind her. Wilderness found he was holding the photo of Danny, and gently wedged it back in the frame with the boy’s grandfather.

  “Who’d have believed it? My Danny a schoolteacher.”

  “And Billy. What did Billy have to say about that?”

  “A big fat yes was what Bill had to say. Almost smiled. War changed him, you know. Changed everyone I shouldn’t wonder. He’s a local councillor now, solid Labour. Got himself a safe seat for Westminster next time around. Imagine, Billy Jacks MP. And you, young Joe. Has it all changed you? You were such a strange one, always with your nose in a book, always takin’ the piss when you thought no one could hear you.”

  “It was the books I came about.”

  “Yeah, but there’s no hurry. Have a cuppa and catch up. You been gone a while.”

  “Two and a half years. Long enough for Merle to do a bunk.”

  “Well . . . I can tell you about that. If you let me.”

  He did.

  He sat and sipped at tea. Let her top him up. And heard how Merle had married a toff—the whore’s equivalent of a stage-door johnnie. How they had lived in Devonshire Place until Christmas, when he had inher
ited a castle in Scotland. Judy wasn’t sure where, but Merle was bound to surface sooner or later.

  And all Wilderness could think of was the money—he and Abner had stashed hundreds, possibly thousands, between 1941 and the old man’s death, and Merle had trousered the lot. He and Frank had made a packet in Berlin, and Yuri had trousered the lion’s share. Would he never get lucky?

  She showed him up to the top floor, the room that had been Danny’s. His books, his wooden model of a Lancaster, the remains of his Meccano kit, his striped belt with the snake-S buckle, his penknife, his Eveready torch missing bulb and batteries, his wristwatch missing the winding wheel, his dog-eared copy of Health and Efficiency from March 1938 . . . Rada’s clipping files . . . all his worldly possessions were in three wooden orange-boxes under the bed.

  Judy flopped onto the bed, watching as he sifted through his childhood. She picked up Health and Efficiency.

  “You cheeky devil. I used to confiscate these off Danny.”

  “As I recall it was Danny gave it to me. Or, more precisely, he sold it to me.”

  “How much?”

  “A bob.”

  She held the cover out to him—an arty black-and-white nude, eyes averted, head back, stretching her tits flat against her ribs. A marked resemblance to Merle’s Hollywood namesake, Miss Oberon.

  “You were robbed. She’s not all that much to look at. Mine are better than hers.”

  He didn’t doubt it. His adolescent fantasies had encompassed that. He rummaged through his Mark Twains and his R. M. Ballantynes, found his copy of Belloc’s Cautionary Verses, his Diary of a Nobody, heard the swish as her dress hit the floor, saw it puddle next to him.

  He looked up; she was unhooking her bra.

  “See. Bloody good they are.”

  The weight of one in each hand, as though she were buying fruit down the market. Then she put her thumbs in her knickers and pushed them down to her knees.

  “Where’s Billy?” he said.

  “Catford dogs. Won’t be back for hours.”